The Three-Box Approach to Business Model Reinvention: Putting the Idea into Practice

Vijay Govindarajan’s and Chris Trimble’s article, “The CEO’s Role in Business Model Reinvention,” appeared in our January-February 2011 issue. The article urged forward-looking CEOs to manage reinvention with a “three-box approach”:

Box 1: Manage the present

Box 2: Selectively forget the past

Box 3: Create the future

Using the example of Infosys chairman N.R. Narayana Murthy, the authors showed how one leader used the approach to remake a company.

But the three-box approach is not reserved for those in the C-suite or for multinational companies. In fact it can be applied in any organizational setting: non-profit, for profit, in a factory or in a service organization, in a big conglomerate or a small family-run business.

To give readers a sense of how to apply the approach to their own setting, we interviewed Vijay Govindarajan and Brian Goldner, the CEO of Hasbro, Inc. Brian Goldner was the chief architect of Hasbro’s turnaround strategy in 2000, which focused on leveraging the company’s core brands, reducing costs, and lessening its reliance on its licensed business. To do this, he relied on the three-box approach. Vijay and Brian discuss how to balance resources across the three boxes while knowing what to destroy and what to create.

The article sparked a lot of discussion with HBR readers – from CEOs to church pastors – who found the approach a refreshing and practical way to think about strategy. We hope this interview continues the conversation.